


Degenerate Days

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Captivity, Corporal Punishment, Dubious Consent, For The Revolution, M/M, Non-Consensual Elements, Rebellion, Revolution, Trope Subversion, in which the author tries but finds Enjolras unbreakable, overwrought metaphors, subjolras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:12:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: "AU where Enjolras is the leader of a failed rebellion and is brought before the king/prince/emperor/whatever and that ruler is Grantaire."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into English available: [堕落的时光](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109415) by [Jacinthe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacinthe/pseuds/Jacinthe)



To Enjolras, it is still the denial of a heroic death that seems the greatest outrage. Even greater than his recollection of the last outposts of popular insurgency falling one by one, the crushing of resistance, the government’s reprisals that still soak the land in blood, the deaths of his comrades and his own eventual capture, the three nights spent defeated and exhausted, lying prone on the floor of his cell, refusing food and railing incessantly at his jailors while he awaits an audience with his majesty. It is the absence of a meaningful death that makes him most indignant. 

Three days on from his rebellion’s failure, he is no less incensed at having been taken alive, and now, still struggling, dragged in between four guards and roughly shoved to his knees before the throne, he asks Grantaire himself for death, and is again denied. 

Grantaire finishes the drink in his hand and gestures for another, then looks up. A few shafts of sunlight pierce the gloom of the hall, sufficing to spotlight his latest entertainment.

Enjolras kneels upright, resolutely impenitent, his wrists crossed and bound before him. He’s still dressed in the clothes in which they’d brought him in, now tattered and stained, his golden hair darkened with sweat, dirt and blood and falling insistently over one eye. From under his hair he glares murderously up at his sovereign. 

He is delicious, Grantaire decides, and congratulates himself on his decision to spare him execution, even if this act of mercy seems to have done little to improve the young revolutionary’s temper.

‘I hear you fought valiantly’, says Grantaire, as Enjolras’ eyes narrow in suspicion, his sullen glare lowered and fixed on the flagstones in front of him.

Grantaire nods to the guard nearest Enjolras and the man, stepping smartly forward, takes a fistful of matted blond curls and yanks Enjolras’ head up until, breathing harshly, he makes unwilling eye contact with Grantaire, who holds his burning gaze steady.

‘I _said_ , I hear you fought valiantly. The last to be taken, by all accounts?'

Enjolras is trembling all over with rage. ‘You _hear_? So you take no part in the fighting itself, you know nothing of it, you merely send the forces of repression out against your own people, against my –’

Grantaire waves a hand, spilling droplets of wine on the flagstones. ‘This is of no concern. You are here now, alive, under my jurisdiction. Be reasonable in defeat. Can we come to some arrangement?’

‘Shoot me,’ says Enjolras. ‘Or the noose, or the guillotine, but let me die.’

Grantaire takes another swallow of wine. ‘You think, like all your idiotic, reckless kind, that death is better than dishonour. You have no desire to live, then? My task – my pleasure, my duty no less – can be to convince you otherwise.’

‘To live?’ Enjolras’ blue eyes widen. ‘To live under tyranny, corruption, exploitation and injustice? No.’ 

He raises his head defiantly and spits at the foot of the throne. 

‘If you will not let your people live free, then let me die.’

Grantaire clenches a hand around the arm of the throne. ‘You will live. You need a lesson in reason. But first, a lesson in humility. I’ve had reports of your inflammatory speeches, and now that your rabble-rousing days are over, I’d be grateful if you’d put your mouth to more appropriate use.’ 

Holding Enjolras’ gaze, he slides one polished leather boot forward and nods down at it. The look of affront in his prisoner’s eyes is almost gratifying enough, but Enjolras makes no other move in response. Grantaire wonders if he quite comprehends his situation.

‘Don’t you understand, rebel? You are beaten. Your rebellion is over, your followers are dead or soon will be. Be reasonable. You’re already on your knees before me. Do you imagine you still have any dignity to protect?’ He gestures downwards again. ‘Demonstrate your submission.’

Enjolras stares at the flagstones, unmoving. Grantaire sighs. 

‘I don’t have to be this lenient, you know. Immediate execution or a drawn-out death from torture is how a less forbearing ruler would have had you dealt with, traitor.’ 

Enjolras looks up. When he speaks, his voice is cold with fury. 

‘It is you and your fellow parasites who are betraying your country with every moment you remain in control of it. *I* am a patriot.’

This is too much, and Grantaire loses patience. Setting down his drink, he stands and from a rack against the wall retrieves a martinet. At the sight of it in his hand Enjolras’ eyes widen incredulously, drawing a smirk from Grantaire.

‘If you insist on displaying the obstinacy, the insolence, and the naivety of a child, then you’ll be punished like one,’ he says, and hands the whip to a guard before returning to his seat.

Hauled upright and stripped, Enjolras finds himself stretched over the banqueting table before the throne, held fast between two of the guards while a third wields the martinet against flawless bared skin. 

Grantaire watches, between leisurely mouthfuls of wine, as Enjolras jerks and writhes beneath the lash, pressing his hips against the table’s unyielding edge, the whip's thin leather tails leaving stinging red weals across his thighs and ass, drawing pained gasps from his parted lips. 

It is all Enjolras can do not to scream – in rage and frustration more than in pain. The bite of the whip across his bare skin pales in significance next to how humiliated it makes him feel. To not even be granted a dignified martyrdom, but instead to be brought before his enemy and mocked, and now disciplined like a misbehaving schoolboy, is almost more than he can bear. Still, to deny Grantaire full satisfaction, he does no more than gasp and whimper, biting his lower lip until he tastes blood.

Enjolras’ self-control, his lack of utter submission, is infuriating. Grantaire is suddenly tired of this as well as blazingly angry. Rising to his feet, he addresses the man with the whip, his tone vicious:

‘Keep going. Keep it up until he’s begging you to stop, and then keep going some more.’ 

At the doorway he adds almost disinterestedly, over his shoulder: ‘Whether he can persuade you to stop is your concern, of course. Let’s see how much of that legendary rhetorical skill he retains in this position.’ 

As he leaves the throne room Grantaire is already painfully hard, and harder by the time he reaches the cloistered silence of his bedchamber. He throws himself down on his bed and wraps a hand around his cock and brings himself to climax almost instantly as the corridors finally echo to Enjolras’ broken sobbing.


	2. Chapter 2

Grantaire does not consider himself unreasonable. What some may call – though never to his face – mere decadent and dissipated cynicism, he has always preferred to see as realism and practicality, and the nature of his prisoner’s visionary fervour and stubborn resistance intrigues him as much as it infuriates. Enjolras is far from the first idealistic young idiot whose recklessness Grantaire has seen result in conflict, violence and death, and while he can’t pretend that he doesn’t appreciate seeing him on his knees, seeing that damnable arrogance on the verge of cracking, evidently something beyond physical punishment is required to teach him the error of his ways.

Enjolras remains delightfully recalcitrant, even now, chained to the wall of his cell with his hands manacled above his head, cursorily cleaned up but still dressed in tattered clothing. His mouth is gagged with dirty cloth, his obstinate gaze fixed on the opposite wall as Grantaire stands before him.

‘I’m almost tempted to apologise for treating you in this manner,’ Grantaire tells him, ‘but I’ve had quite enough of your mouth and this appears to be the only effective way of shutting you up.’ 

He takes a swig from his bottle. ‘I’m also aware of how tedious the guards are finding your persistently treasonous diatribes, not to mention your questioning them on their pay and conditions – which, by the way, have always been perfectly adequate.’

He looks Enjolras up and down, his gaze lingering on the alabaster skin displayed through the ripped fabric of his once-white shirt, and smirks. ‘If you really wanted to seduce them to your cause, moreover, I presume you know you have more obvious attractions at your disposal.’

Enjolras rolls his eyes, then sullenly looks away, managing to convey complete disdain despite his inability to utter a word. Grantaire is seized by the compulsion to be vindictive, to break him with words rather than with weaponry.

‘I’ve had reports, too, you know, of your purity, your virtue. I hear you kept yourself chaste for the revolution like some vestal priestess.’ 

He takes a step closer, watching Enjolras’ eyes widen and his muscles tense. Setting the bottle down on the floor of the cell, he slips a hand between his captive’s legs and palms the growing hardness of his cock, ignoring Enjolras’ attempts at resistance and relishing his outraged intake of breath through the gag. 

‘I wonder how much truth there is to legend,’ he continues. ‘Shall we find out? Has no one enjoyed you like this before, rebel?’

Enjolras can voice no response, of course, but the look in his eyes is murder. The muscles of his throat flex as he swallows hard. It is the work of seconds to expose his cock and take him back in hand and then Grantaire slides an exploratory hand up under Enjolras’ torn and bloodstained shirt, watching his face for any reaction beyond indignant disgust. 

His eyes falling shut, Enjolras turns his face away sharply, his jaw stubbornly set. Tightening his grip on Enjolras’ cock, Grantaire leans in to whisper through his hair:

‘No? Never? None of your comrades at the barricade, did you never experiment with any of them?'

Enjolras’ breathing is audibly harsh through the cloth, his chest heaving under Grantaire’s ministrations. Grantaire is merciless, his own breathing growing laboured as his own cock hardens. He twists his fingers in Enjolras’ hair, licking and biting at his bared neck and shoulder between insistently whispered words, speeding up the motions of his hand: 

‘Do you imagine they were there from principle, your friends, rather than from lust? I imagine all of them wanted to initiate you. They must have pictured you like this – or on your knees, on your back with your legs spread – I’m sure they all dreamt of making you theirs one day, even as they blithely followed you and let you lead them to their death – ’

With a stifled cry, Enjolras comes in Grantaire’s hand, shuddering with suppressed emotion. When he slides a hand under Enjolras’ jaw and turns his face back towards him Grantaire is satisfied to see his gaze downcast, his eyelids swollen and red and his face gratifyingly streaked with shed tears.


	3. Chapter 3

Grantaire doesn’t feel as though he’s gone too far, but merely far enough. Enjolras’ impassive carapace is satisfactorily cracked, that marble cheek now wet with tears, but the fire in his eyes remains undimmed. 

Feeling magnanimous in victory, Grantaire loosens his captive’s gag and then regrets it instantly, as Enjolras takes a single appreciative gasp of air before his words spill out in torrents, his voice swelling not with repentance or shame but with that same controlled and icy fury to which Grantaire is rapidly becoming accustomed: 

‘ _How dare you_? Don’t speak of my friends, my comrades. How can you understand things of which you are incapable? How dare you take in vain the name of something you have no idea about – what do you know of friendship, of sacrifice, of solidarity –’

‘The urge to stop up your mouth again,’ says Grantaire with a mildness Enjolras finds maddening, ‘is almost overwhelming.’ 

He stoops to pick up the wine bottle from the floor of the cell and, raising an eyebrow, places it tentatively against his prisoner’s lower lip. Enjolras falls silent, with immensely pleasing if unexpected obedience, and runs his tongue over his parted lips before opening them further and letting Grantaire tilt the bottle upward, filling his mouth with wine. 

The drink is the first to have passed his lips in hours, if not days, and his eyes fall shut as he swallows. Stray droplets trickle down from the corner of Enjolras’ mouth, the wine dark as blood against his ashen skin. Grantaire takes the opportunity to lean in and catch the overspill on his tongue, drawing from Enjolras a slight suppressed shiver that might be revulsion or might be something more intriguing. 

Enjolras is one of those interesting cases, he decides, whose single-minded and bloody-minded pursuit of civilised ideals makes them savage, capable of things beyond thought and reason in the name of liberty. He is virtue and madness combined. Rather than a vestal virgin, he’d make a suitable _maenad_ , with all that pent-up aggression fairly begging for release. Grantaire thinks he might even prefer him untamed, unbroken, if he can only be persuaded to hold himself – his mouth, particularly – in check. 

Drawing back but closely studying his captive’s face, Grantaire softly brushes the tangled and dirty blond curls out of Enjolras’ eyes as he speaks to him. He has a strange urge to see him properly cleaned up, unchained, and dressed with amusing inappropriateness in a courtesan’s seductive finery, an image which he entertains for no more than a second.

‘You have had no experience of earthly pleasures, then, have you – nothing to anchor you to the real world? Is this why you choose to waste your youth, your beauty, in troublemaking of the dullest kind?' 

He cups a hand under Enjolras' jaw, preventing him from turning his face away in disdain. 'Your revolutionary career has been what some might call a total waste of talent. Why not dedicate that energy, that passion, to a pursuit in which you’d cause fewer people to meet a pointless death?’

‘My _pursuit_ ’, says Enjolras, ‘is that of liberty and justice against tyranny and oppression – ’

Grantaire steps back, exasperated, and cuts him off impatiently.

‘Is that all you think I’m capable of exercising? Look at the restraint I’m currently displaying, if you would – I find you beautiful, and I’d be quite within my rights to have you bent naked over the arm of the throne for me, every day without fail, and don’t think I haven’t thought about doing so every time I look at you – taking that contemptuous mouth of yours, taking your arse, having you spread wide open for me and making you scream – ’

Enjolras stares at the floor, his breathing quick and shallow. ‘Do as you wish. What happens to my body is no longer my concern.’

Grantaire sighs. ‘Nothing is so stupid as to conquer; true glory lies in convincing. Convince me, then, of what you claim I have no idea about.’ 

He meets Enjolras’ startled blue eyes. ‘I find myself cursed to teach you the error of your ways – in order to do so I’d like to understand you. Explain your ideals, your vision, so that I can do so.’ 

Enjolras stares at him, and then his gaze flickers upwards to where his hands are still shackled. 

‘Not like this,’ he says, his voice incongruously commanding. ‘Take off these chains and let us speak as equals.’


	4. Chapter 4

Grantaire is disinclined to grant too many concessions, and Enjolras finds himself unchained but with his wrists bound behind his back, slightly light-headed from the wine Grantaire has offered him, and kneeling at the foot of the _chaise longue_ on which his sovereign reclines. 

He listens with all the appearance of interest as Enjolras talks. Enjolras devotes all his rhetorical talent to speaking of revolution as a moral duty, eulogising constitutional democracy against absolutism, championing the distribution of power against its concentration in a few hands, denouncing rule through arbitrary privilege rather than popular consent – 

Listening to Enjolras is exhausting. Grantaire’s attention starts to drift appreciatively to how his lips part and purse around the words he speaks, the way the burnished gold of his hair haloes his face, the tension in the muscles of his shoulders. He recalls a time, before being wine-addled became habitual, when his mind and arguments were as sharp as this and his vision seemed as clear, although he was never quite this utopian and idealistic, having no burning, urgent faith in humanity to be doomed to disappointment. He was less jaded and dissolute in those days, too, he thinks, although no less capricious.

Enjolras is halfway through a digression on whether the use of violence by the state sanctions the use of violence to overthrow it when Grantaire, growing bored, moves to dismiss him. Aware of having failed to convince with philosophy, Enjolras’ eyes flash and he speaks more quickly and purposefully, sharply concluding his argument: 

‘You must see, then, that consent is vital for just and righteous rule.’ He draws a deep breath. ‘Compare the way that you have forced your attentions on me, when I have been unable to resist, with the superior value that the same thing would have had if freely given – shall I show you?’

Grantaire looks at him with slight sheepishness and sudden suspicion, raising an eyebrow. 

‘Unbind my hands’, says Enjolras, ‘please.’

Fascinated in spite of himself, Grantaire kneels behind Enjolras to take his captive’s wrists in his hands, gently undoing their binding before stepping back to stand in front of him.

Enjolras, remaining on his knees, holds Grantaire’s gaze as he calmly unbuttons his shirt and lets it fall. 

‘There – don’t you find this preferable to having me stripped by your guards, on your orders? Wouldn’t you prefer me to submit of my own free will?’

‘Stand up,’ says Grantaire, breathlessly, and Enjolras instantly obeys with his eyes passively downcast, offering himself for Grantaire’s contemplation. 

His bare skin almost golden in the candlelight, Enjolras is more intoxicating than any wine. He looks up through his hair. 

‘Do you desire submission to your rule? Then prove yourself worthy of it. Put an end to the arbitrary exercise of power and replace poverty and starvation with democratic access and participation. The people are worthy of respect – treat them as your consort, not your whore.’ 

The wine Enjolras has drunk has gone to his head, as has the glimpse of a chance to influence Grantaire, or he would surely never do what he does next. Stepping forward, he licks his lips, his voice falling to a softer and suggestive pitch:

‘You have spoken of coming to an arrangement, you have spoken of introducing me to earthly pleasures. Let me demonstrate, through sacrifice, my commitment to the people.’ 

He leans in and whispers into Grantaire’s hair, moving Grantaire’s hands to clutch around his hips. ‘If it will induce you to set this country free, then I am willing to be yours in subjugation.’ 

With Enjolras pressing himself against him, half-naked, lithe and compliant, Grantaire is hardly thinking clearly. He will, he now sees, only be broken by the death he so desires, and perhaps not even then, whereas the prospect of seeing Enjolras submit of his own volition, seeing him willingly swallow his pride, is a diverting proposition to say the least. 

He tangles a hand in Enjolras’ hair, pulling his head back to look him in the eyes. ‘How far will you take this, rebel? If I accept your arguments, what will you give me?’

‘Anything you wish. Do you want me on my knees, to see me whipped, to have me readily degrade myself? I will permit it. For as long as you grant the people liberty I will be yours to corrupt, to exploit, to command – to rule. Take me.’ 

Enjolras drops back to his knees and lowers his mouth to the polished black leather of Grantaire’s boot. By the time he looks up again, political concessions seem a minor price to pay.

***

Grantaire expects to tire of this eventually, and when he does, in dispensing with Enjolras he intends to dispense with this temporary suspension of his absolute rule. Until then, he is content to indulge Enjolras’ desire for democratic reform in order to indulge his own desires with Enjolras.

Cleaned up and collared, holding himself in check as promised, Enjolras is predictably glorious. He denies Grantaire nothing, devoting his mouth to sucking cock instead of sedition and objecting only occasionally to the extravagance of the surroundings in which he lets himself, over and over, be tied up, spread open and taken, used in every capacity Grantaire can imagine. He has proven so adept at feigning pleasure, worship and adulation that Grantaire can at times allow himself to consider it genuine. 

At other times, Grantaire is touched by the vague fear that Enjolras’ ultimate intentions are not those of Salome with her ruler but those of Judith with Holofernes. Sometimes, sunk in post-coital lassitude next to him, he half-expects to feel him draw a blade across his throat, inflicting a more intimate and efficient decapitation than most despots could expect on the guillotine. But it hasn’t happened yet, and Enjolras in unguarded moments even looks content, as though he has succeeded in achieving a martyrdom of sorts.


End file.
